


Lost Angels

by pcychedelic



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Hollywood, Drugs, Flashbacks, M/M, No Happy Ending Fest, Smut, Substance Abuse, Suicide Attempt, Unhappy Ending, drug overdose, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:27:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22829431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pcychedelic/pseuds/pcychedelic
Summary: A funeral brings Kyungsoo back to LA.
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun/Do Kyungsoo | D.O
Comments: 35
Kudos: 79
Collections: No Happy Ending Fest - 2019





	Lost Angels

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt #:** 209  
>  **Prompt:** Kyungsoo has been running from his past for five years now. He left home and moved to another country to finish college, but when he gets word of the death of someone special, he has to go back and remember who he is.  
>  **Pairing/Main Character(s):** Baekhyun/D.O.  
>  **Side Characters(if any):** Chanyeol, Suho, Chen, Sehun  
>  **Word Count:** 15.3k  
>  **Warning(s)/Additional Tag(s):** Substance (Alcohol, Drugs) Abuse, Suicide Attempt, Drug Overdose, Flashbacks  
>  **Author's note:**  
>  Writing this has been emotionally draining, to say the least, and I'd like to thank these people for helping me get through the process: to the mods, thank you for the patience, understanding, and kindness you've shown throughout the round; to A, thank you for always reassuring me about my writing - I know I would've given up long ago if it weren't for you; finally, to the prompter, thank you for the wonderful prompt - the story eventually wrote itself.
> 
> I've never been to Los Angeles nor have I done drugs, so apologies for any inaccuracies as all the places and other stuff I've mentioned here are purely based on quick Google searches I've managed to do. This fic is loosely inspired by BoJack Horseman and essentially every other work of art that has something to do with LA (lol).
> 
> I hope this doesn't suck as much as I think it does and that you all enjoy reading this!
> 
> _[UPDATED 200320] Some edits have been made on minor mistakes & the Spotify link for the playlist has been added to the end notes. Also: prequel is on its way!_

**_Present Day_ **

Calle Larios is already packed with people at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. Málagueños — or Spaniards, in general — aren’t known for being early risers, but everyone’s up and about this early on a weekday to do some last-minute shopping before the New Year rolls in.

Kyungsoo doesn’t mind the crowd. Living in Málaga for the past five years has desensitized him from hordes of people as the region of Costa del Sol attracts millions of tourists and expats each year. An expat himself, Kyungsoo is no stranger to people flocking to someplace else to get away from wherever they came from, whether it be for good or for a short vacation. As a matter of fact, that’s why he’s here in the first place.

Kyungsoo takes Chanyeol by the hand, weaving themselves through the crowd until they reach the end of the street and into Plaza de la Constitucion where their favorite coffee shop sits. Chanyeol goes on to order their usual: a _sombra_ for him and a _nube_ for Kyungsoo.

This is what a typical day in Málaga is like for them, a day they feel like they’ve lived for the hundredth time.

That is, until the shrill sound of Kyungsoo’s ringtone cuts through the noise of the plaza. The caller ID bears the name of someone Kyungsoo hasn’t heard from for quite some time.

“Hello?” Kyungsoo says as he brings the phone to his ear, gauging whether he should feel happy or worried that an old friend has called after so long. He immediately settles on the latter when he realizes that this phone call wouldn’t be happening if everything was alright. Kyungsoo glances at his wristwatch and makes a quick calculation to account for the time difference between him and the person at the other end of the line. “It’s almost 2 a.m. there. What’s wrong?”

A sigh resonates through the speaker. “You need to come home.”

* * *

The rest of the day passes by in a haze.

Kyungsoo still feels like his heart has been stepped on hours after hearing the news. If he’s going to be completely honest, going back to Los Angeles is something that hasn’t left his mind since he left — it’s like a rancid itch in his subconscious that just wouldn’t go away, but he had never imagined that it would be under these circumstances.

Kyungsoo has spoken very few words since the phone call this morning, but, as always, Chanyeol doesn’t try to force him to talk about it.

Chanyeol doesn’t let go of Kyungsoo’s hand even as he drives, even giving Kyungsoo small, reassuring smiles from time to time. But as much as Kyungsoo loves Chanyeol, the gestures do little to make him feel better.

But it isn’t Chanyeol’s fault. Grief doesn’t have a cure-all.

Soon, the city dissolves behind them and the airport comes into view. But as they inch closer and closer to the departure gates, a nagging thought at the back of Kyungsoo’s mind is telling him to turn around and sit this one out.

“Hey, are you okay?” Chanyeol asks.

Having realized just now that they’ve already stopped, Kyungsoo nods weakly. “Yeah. I’m good. I’m just… scared.”

“Of coming back home?”

But that’s the thing: Kyungsoo doesn’t consider Los Angeles as home anymore.

Sure, that’s where he grew up in, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t miss it, but it’s also possible for one to miss something without wanting to go back to it. Los Angeles has been painful for the most part, and Kyungsoo’s afraid of reliving that pain when he sets foot there again.

But Kyungsoo can’t say any of those things, so he just gives Chanyeol a faint smile before stepping out of the car where he’s greeted by the cold winter air. Chanyeol follows suit and goes on to haul Kyungsoo’s luggage out of the trunk.

“You know, you don’t have to go alone,” Chanyeol says softly as he hands Kyungsoo his bags. “I have my passport with me. I can—”

“No, Yeol. You don’t have to do that.”

“I know,” Chanyeol whispers, taking Kyungsoo’s hands into his. “But you said you were scared. You don’t have to force yourself to go alone if you don’t want to.”

“I haven’t been to LA since I left, so of course I’m scared,” Kyungsoo says. A half-hearted chuckle falls from his lips. “But this is something I have to do on my own. I think I owe him that much, at least.”

Chanyeol purses his lips. Kyungsoo expects him to say something along the lines of how he doesn’t owe anyone anything, but instead, Chanyeol simply nods. “Okay,” Chanyeol says after a while. “Kinda sucks how I won’t have my New Year’s kiss this year, though.”

Kyungsoo laughs, the first genuine one he’s allowed himself all day, and for a brief moment, his chest doesn’t feel like it’s carrying the world. He kisses Chanyeol, letting it linger for a couple of seconds before pulling away, and says, “There. It’s two days early, but you’ll take it, won’t you?”

Chanyeol smiles and touches the tip of his nose to Kyungsoo’s. “When have I ever said no to you?”

* * *

Kyungsoo hates nothing more than long-haul flights.

His body aches in places he didn’t know it could, and when he finally lands on LAX, he feels like he’s going to pass out at any moment. The fact that it’s 7 a.m. and already way too bright in Los Angeles isn’t helping his case because his body’s still running on Spanish time.

He sees Junmyeon outside the arrival gate almost immediately, holding a Starbucks cup in one hand and a poorly-handwritten sign that says _‘MY FAVORITE CLIENT’_ in the other _._

“I haven’t seen you in five years and the first thing you do is lie to me,” Kyungsoo comments flatly. “I wasn’t your favorite client.”

His former agent rolls his eyes and hands him the coffee. “Nice to see you too,” Junmyeon says. “You look like shit, by the way.”

Kyungsoo eagerly accepts the caffeine. His body sorely needs energy right now after that horrendous eighteen-hour flight. He doesn’t even try to rebut Junmyeon’s statement because he _does_ feel like shit. Physically and mentally.

“Thanks for the coffee,” Kyungsoo says when they get inside Junmyeon’s car.

“I knew you’d be needing it,” Junmyeon shrugs. “I know how much you hate flying. But you’ll probably get sick of coffee by the weekend. That’s all we have at the funeral.”

Kyungsoo’s stomach roils at that last word. A painful reminder of what he’s really here for.

Suddenly the coffee tastes unbearably bitter on his tongue. He puts it back in the cup holder and looks out the window as the city passes by in flashes of relatively low-rise buildings, quaint cafés, and people rushing to where they needed to be.

Los Angeles hasn’t changed much, that’s for sure. But the people living in it have, and there’s one less of them.

“How did it happen?”

Junmyeon heaves a deep breath as he merges onto the 134. “The coroner said his breathing continuously slowed down until it just stopped. Bad way to go, I guess.”

Kyungsoo can’t imagine how terrible that must’ve felt like — feeling like drowning when you’re nowhere near water, with no one to hear you screaming for help because you don’t have enough air in your lungs to blow the words out.

“Heroin?”

Junmyeon shakes his head. “Vicodin. And vodka, I think.” When Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything, he continues, “Jongdae found him. He called me in the middle of the night and told me he had a hunch that something was wrong. When he got there, the poor kid was on his couch and not breathing. Paramedics couldn’t do anything.”

Threats of tears sting Kyungsoo’s eyes, but he holds it together. “I thought… He was clean, wasn’t he? He told me that in his last letter.”

“He sent that four years ago, Soo,” Junmyeon replies quietly, his voice almost a whisper. “But yeah, we thought so too. I don’t blame him, though. He’s human. We’re all human. It’s not easy to stay on the right track all of the time.”

They turn right onto Sunset Strip after a few miles; a cold wave of nostalgia washes over Kyungsoo. He still remembers the nights they hopped from one nightclub to another like it was yesterday, how they walked through this very boulevard while the world was spinning in their minds, how Junmyeon would pick them up when they’re too wasted to even stand.

It reminds him of his youth — of his hopefulness, but also of his carelessness. Los Angeles is the kind of place that chews you up and spits you out, and he’s afraid that coming back here means that he’ll be eaten up again.

Every corner of this city reeks of memories, some more than others. But Kyungsoo can trace all of these memories back to the club on the corner of Sunset and Larrabee, its all-black exterior sticking out like a sore thumb in the multicolored boulevard.

“I heard Viper was sold,” Kyungsoo remarks as they drive by the nightclub.

“Yeah,” Junmyeon confirms. “There’s this rumor that’s been going around for about two years now. They say it’s gonna be demolished to make way for a hotel.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t take his eyes off the club until after they’ve completely passed by it. “Like House of Blues. They closed that one down just a little after I left, right?”

“They did. They demolished it two years after that. People were pissed, naturally. But they got over it since they didn’t have a choice. I’m sure that’ll happen too when Viper closes for good,” Junmyeon says.

It sucks, Kyungsoo thinks, when something that’s been there for the whole time just disappears — like House of Blues, like Viper. It disrupts the comfort of knowing it exists, that it’s there at arm’s length, like deleting a photo from a very special day. There’s nothing else to remember it by, no evidence that it really did happen.

Kyungsoo probably hates cliches the most next to long-haul flights, but that cheesy sentiment of realizing that you took something for granted only when it’s no longer there has never hit closer to home than it did before. People take things for granted because they always thought it wasn’t going anywhere.

“That’s where you first met him, right?” Junmyeon asks. “During one of my birthday parties?”

A warm feeling springs from Kyungsoo’s chest, and he welcomes it with a faint smile. “Yes,” he answers, and the years melt away as he remembers that night.

**_May 2014_ **

“Scotch on the rocks,” Kyungsoo says to the bartender.

The bartender smiles and nods, whipping out a glass with some ice and then filling it halfway with Chivas 12. “First time here?” he asks.

Kyungsoo shakes his head. He picks up the glass and takes a generous swig from it. “I’ve been here before. I just don’t come often.”

The Viper Room’s secret whiskey bar isn’t exactly a secret anymore, at least for locals. The staircase leading to it is just past the cashier, but it’s easy to miss if you don’t know that it exists. It’s where locals come to take it slow if they aren’t in the mood to party upstairs.

“Ah, figures,” the bartender shrugs. “Haven’t seen you before in Junmyeon’s parties. How do you know him?”

Kyungsoo downs the rest of his drink, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “He’s my agent. I signed with him just a few weeks ago.” He slides his glass back to the bartender, asking him to pour another one. “How do _you_ know Junmyeon?”

“He always rents the bar on his birthday,” the bartender explains. This time he pours from a different bottle. Kyungsoo catches the familiar logo, but isn’t quite sure which kind it is.

“That looks expensive,” he says. “Should you be giving that to me so generously?”

The bartender chuckles. “It’s a congratulatory drink, for signing with one of the best agents in Hollywood. On the house, of course.”

Kyungsoo shrugs. He takes back the drink wordlessly because it’s difficult to argue with free premium booze. He takes a small sip of the golden liquid, letting out a low whistle as soon as he’s tasted it. “Damn. What is this?”

“Thirty year-old Walker. Master Blender, 1880,” the bartender says, a smirk playing on his lips. He pours one for himself and then brings his glass up to Kyungsoo’s. “A toast. For your career. LA’s a shark tank, but I’m sure Junmyeon will take care of you.”

They both laugh, finishing their drinks in one clean swig.

“Should you be drinking on duty, Minseok?” a voice asks from behind Kyungsoo.

The stranger takes the seat on the bar next to Kyungsoo, and Kyungsoo can’t help but shy away from the sudden encroachment. He looks familiar, Kyungsoo thinks.

The bartender, whose name is Minseok, apparently, lets out an easy laugh. “I tend the bar, Minho. It takes more than half a glass of scotch to get me drunk.”

A lightbulb goes off in Kyungsoo’s mind. _Choi Minho_. That’s why he looked familiar.

Someone calls Minseok from the far end of the bar, leaving Kyungsoo with the newcomer. But Kyungsoo doesn’t pay him any attention. He takes a newfound interest in his drink, swirling the liquid in the glass until the ice cubes melt.

“Man, Minseok flirts with everyone who asks for a drink from him,” Minho says, breaking the silence.

Kyungsoo takes another sip without sparing him a glance. “He wasn’t flirting. He was making conversation,” he replies indifferently.

“O-oh. Yeah. I was just kidding,” Minho stammers as he lets out a nervous laugh. “I’m Choi Minho, by the way.”

Minho extends his hand out for Kyungsoo to shake, but Kyungsoo just stares at him blankly. “I know who you are. I’m not interested.”

“What?” Minho laughs, but again, it comes out shaky, like he’s embarrassed. “Jeez, I was just introducing myself. No need—”

A chuckle coming from Kyungsoo’s left interrupts whatever pathetic excuse Minho was about to come up with.

Kyungsoo turns his head to the source of laughter, his eyes falling on the man sitting a few stools away from him. Mild amusement dances on the man’s face with his lips curled into a mischievous smile. He’s beautiful, Kyungsoo thinks, but that isn’t the most striking thing about him — it’s his hair, dyed silver-gray, which looks luminescent even in the dim lighting of the bar.

“The kid said he’s not interested, Minho,” the man says. “Better leave him alone before a sexual harassment lawsuit that you can’t bribe yourself out of flies your way.”

Minho leaves without another word, his hands balling into fists on his side.

Kyungsoo looks at the silver-haired man once again. A satisfied smirk is playing on the man’s lips, obviously pleased with himself for saving someone from the likes of Choi Minho.

“Thanks,” Kyungsoo says. His face feels unusually warm, and he isn’t sure whether it’s because of the scotch or because of the man sitting just a few feet away from him.

“Don’t mention it,” he replies, taking a swig out of his beer. “Smart of you to turn him away without giving him your name.”

“It’s a small industry. You hear things one way or another.”

The silver-haired man laughs, putting his perfect teeth on display. Kyungsoo swears his heart skipped a beat, and he hates how he felt it; he should be used to beautiful people by now. He _is_ in Tinseltown, after all.

And yet here he is blushing, all because some actor has thrown him a dazzling smile.

“You’re Junmyeon’s new kid, right?” the man asks.

“If by kid you mean a client and not like a boy toy or something, then yes,” Kyungsoo says. He stands up from his seat and moves closer to his new acquaintance, offering his hand. “Doh Kyungsoo.”

The man chuckles and accepts the handshake. “Ah, so you’re the kid from that play in Bootleg Theater Junmyeon’s been raving about. He must’ve been over the moon when you finally signed onto him.”

“Well, it wasn’t a hard choice to begin with. He has a good track record.” Kyungsoo scratches the back of his neck. He’s never been used to being at the receiving end of compliments, especially when they’re about his acting.

“So, what do you think about the script?”

Kyungsoo freezes, his drink stopping in midair. “What script?”

“Ah, he hasn’t told you yet…” the man smiles knowingly. “I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise, but let’s just say we’re about to see more of each other.” He stands up from his seat, straightening out the blazer over his white shirt. “Byun Baekhyun,” the silver-haired man finally introduces himself.

But Kyungsoo already knows who he is.

**_Present Day_ **

“We’re here,” Junmyeon says as he turns off the ignition.

When the purring of the engine stops, deafening silence fills every nook and cranny of the car, and all Kyungsoo can hear is his heartbeat and ragged breathing.

The quick stop at Junmyeon’s place for a shower and a nap did nothing to refresh Kyungsoo. If anything, he feels even more tired now that they’ve finally arrived, the anxiousness that found home in his chest now settling into a numb crackle in his heart.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have come. He should’ve turned around and never looked back when he had the chance. But what is there to do when the elephant in the room is right in front of him, merely waiting for him to confront it?

Junmyeon sighs. “You can stay out here for a while if you want,” he says, the concern and understanding unmistakable in his voice. “You can come in when you’re ready.” He unbuckles his seatbelt and gives Kyungsoo’s hand one last squeeze before leaving the car and entering the mansion.

The reality of why he’s here hasn’t quite sunk into Kyungsoo just yet, not even after spending hours in the air and on the road just to get to this moment.

Kyungsoo can’t wrap his mind around the fact that when he steps inside that house, its owner won’t be there to greet him with the smile that he loved seeing on him. The man that he spent his twenties with won’t be there. His first love won’t be there.

Byun Baekhyun won’t be there.

The tears finally come.

Kyungsoo doesn’t know how he managed to hold it in for this long. Maybe it’s because now it feels as real as it can be, because he can’t turn a blind eye to the crowd dressed in black rushing into the house where he lived for five short years before leaving Los Angeles for good. It’s like the universe is forcing him to face the truth when he’s nowhere near ready, backing him up in a corner where he has no means of escaping.

But no one’s ever ready for death — not the death of the people they love and certainly not their own. It’s the only surprise in life that can’t be spoiled because no one can ever see it coming.

Kyungsoo searches for his phone as tears continue to stream down his face, his thumb trembling as it hovers over the call button on Chanyeol’s contact page.

He thinks about it once, twice, thrice… but he eventually locks his phone again when he realizes how extremely selfish it is to use Chanyeol as an excuse to distract himself from his situation.

 _This is something I have to do on my own_ , he remembers telling Chanyeol before boarding the flight to Los Angeles. _I think I owe him that much, at least_.

Kyungsoo wipes his tears away, unbuckles his seatbelt, and takes a deep breath before he finally steps out of the car.

Instead of heading inside the house, Kyungsoo goes around it, taking the pathway in the garden that leads to the pool deck at the back of the mansion. He sits on a sun lounger and looks over the deck, taking in the view of the city that he hasn’t seen in years.

The Hollywood Sign can be seen from the deck, its white letters standing out among the hills it’s nestled in. Kyungsoo feels like the landmark’s taunting him. _All it took was a funeral for you to finally come home_ , it seems to say.

“LA missed you, Soo,” a voice from behind him says.

Kyungsoo doesn’t need to turn around to know who it is. “I doubt that,” he replies without taking his eyes off the skyline. “Hi, Jongdae.”

Jongdae gives him a comforting pat on the shoulder before taking a seat beside him. They bask in silence for a while, neither of them knowing the best way to offer consolation to each other.

Kyungsoo’s certain that everything’s just as difficult for Jongdae as it is for him, if not more. He might’ve known Baekhyun well, but Jongdae already knew Baekhyun back when nobody else in this town did.

Genuine friendships are tough to come by in a place as superficial as Los Angeles, Kyungsoo knows that much. People never got into relationships here unless it benefited them in some way, mostly with regards to their careers.

“How’s Spain?” Jongdae asks, his warm voice finally thawing the chilly atmosphere.

Kyungsoo has been asked about this a lot, and he always gave the same answer. “Exactly like SoCal, just more… Spanish,” he chuckles. “At least, that’s how it feels in Málaga. To be honest, it doesn’t feel like I moved at all. Sometimes I wake up feeling like I’m still in LA, and it’s been five years.”

“Hard to forget this place, huh?”

Kyungsoo’s lips curl up in a wistful smile. “That’s an understatement.”

The silence returns. Kyungsoo can feel the heaviness of their hearts hanging in the air. He finally turns to look at Jongdae, noticing the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes.

“Five years. That’s how long I’ve been on the run. But Byun Baekhyun single-handedly made me come back,” Kyungsoo says after a while. “It’s always Baekhyun.”

“He’s always been a pain in the ass,” Jongdae laughs. But his laughter suddenly morphs into quiet sobs, and Kyungsoo goes on to wrap his arms over him in a feeble attempt to offer comfort. Jongdae weeps against Kyungsoo’s shoulder, staining the latter’s suit with tears. “I miss him.”

“We all do.”

Kyungsoo can feel his eyes stinging as well, and this time, he doesn’t fight it back. He lets the tears go as he sits there with his arms draped around Jongdae, the sounds of their muffled whimpers echoing through the deck.

When Kyungsoo first heard about what happened from Junmyeon, he felt as though the world had stopped spinning. He can’t imagine how Jongdae must’ve felt like when he found Baekhyun yesterday, how he probably couldn’t stop trembling as he dialed 911 for his best friend, how all of this must be beyond painful for him.

All the regret that Kyungsoo felt about coming back to Los Angeles dissipates as Jongdae continues to cry in his arms. Kyungsoo finally understands that now is not the time to be selfish — that this isn’t about him. He needs to be there for the people Baekhyun left behind as much as he needs to be comforted himself because no one can understand their pain better than each other.

“If you’d known that he would end up like this… Would you have stayed? To have more time with him?” Jongdae asks.

Kyungsoo almost says yes. Almost. But he stops himself at the last second because the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that it’s not true.

He _does_ wish that he could’ve spent more time with Baekhyun and that he knew him longer than he did, but at the same time, he knows nothing could’ve stopped him from leaving LA five years ago because at that time, that was what he needed the most.

“I don’t know,” Kyungsoo answers. “Everything seems regretful in hindsight.”

“But still… Do you ever think about what could’ve happened then?”

Kyungsoo would be lying if he says no.

**_November 2014_ **

Kyungsoo has heard a great deal about Byun Baekhyun.

There are no secrets in Tinseltown, especially when it comes to the inner workings of celebrity dating life, and Byun Baekhyun has always been in the front and center of it all.

Kyungsoo’s caught wind of all sorts of rumors about his new coworker — like how he’s not necessarily picky between women _or_ men — and after working with him for nearly half a year, Kyungsoo can understand why.

There’s a certain charm to Byun Baekhyun that Kyungsoo can’t put his finger on. Perhaps it’s an amalgamation of his attractiveness tiptoeing androgyny, his ability to illuminate any room he walks into, and his infectious laughter.

But there’s also this vague sense of danger around him that Kyungsoo can feel from a mile away — an intuition that there’s more tucked away under all that charisma. And Kyungsoo’s intuitions are rarely wrong.

He’s almost certain that Byun Baekhyun is a double-edged sword.

And so Kyungsoo makes sure to keep a reasonable distance — not too far but not too close — and to keep their relationship purely professional, to avoid finding himself entangled in Byun Baekhyun’s infamous web of lovers.

It’s the most difficult thing in the world, Kyungsoo realizes, because Byun Baekhyun is anything but hard to love.

Kyungsoo finds himself inching closer and closer, a far cry from the reasonable distance he promised himself, whenever Byun Baekhyun messes up his lines during takes and the whole set erupts into laughter. He finds himself suppressing a smile whenever he overhears Byun Baekhyun mutter something stupid under his breath, a snide remark he thought only he could hear. His heart skips a beat every time Byun Baekhyun offers to give him a ride home even though Kyungsoo’s apartment is out of way. He loses himself in Byun Baekhyun’s voice every single time he talks, the only thought running through his mind is how close he wants to be to his lips.

And now, as he looks at Byun Baekhyun in front of him with his veins buzzing with alcohol, Kyungsoo’s reminded once again of all the promises to himself he’d broken so far.

As Junmyeon gets into the retelling of an anecdote everyone has heard for the millionth time, Kyungsoo excuses himself from the group and heads out to the pool deck, hoping that the chilly night could somehow slap some sense into him.

Kyungsoo takes a swig of his beer, trying to remember at what point in the past six months did he fall into the trap he swore he would avoid. And as if the universe was making fun of him, the very person he was trying to get away from joins him outside.

“You know, if you were getting bored of us, you could’ve just said so,” Baekhyun jokes. He rests his back against the glass railing, one hand holding a beer identical to Kyungsoo’s and the other tucked inside his pocket.

“If I hear Junmyeon tell the story of how he signed you one more time, I might just drown myself here and now.”

Baekhyun laughs, and the sound seems to make the moon shine a bit brighter from Kyungsoo’s perspective. “I can’t let you drown in my pool, sorry.”

“You seem like you know a good place to hide a body,” Kyungsoo teases, earning himself another chuckle from Baekhyun.

They stay silent for a few moments as they bask in the cold and quiet night, the muffled noise from inside the house mixing with the soft chirping of crickets.

Baekhyun’s silver hair has now faded, black roots beginning to peek on top of his crown. His hair seems to glow under the faint moonlight. Kyungsoo can’t help but look at him when he’s quite literally shining like that.

Kyungsoo averts his eyes before Baekhyun catches him staring. He turns to look at the view of the city from Baekhyun’s deck, the lights of the City of Angels flickering below the Hollywood Sign. Kyungsoo has never seen the city look so beautiful, and he’s lived here all his life.

“How come your house has the best view of the city?” Kyungsoo asks. “It’s better than the view from the top of the Home Depot parking garage on Sunset.”

“Not even Griffith Park?” Baekhyun chortles.

Kyungsoo shakes his head, a knowing smile dancing on his lips. “Griffith is for tourists. Locals know the view from Home Depot is the best, but I’m starting to think your pool deck might dethrone that some time soon.”

Baekhyun takes a particularly long sip of his beer before replying. “My parents sold me to the industry before I could even learn how to ride a bike,” he says. “Might as well get a sweet pad from my salary doing basically child labor.”

Kyungsoo _does_ remember Baekhyun as a kid in those tacky sitcoms in the early ‘90s. He recalls his seven-year-old self asking his parents if he could be on TV too instead of going to school. That came true, eventually. Thirty years later.

“I loved your work in Big City Bros,” Kyungsoo says.

Baekhyun looks at him incredulously, then rolls his eyes. “I can never tell when you’re being sarcastic or not. Your face and tone of voice always make it seem like you’re serious, joking, and insulting me all at the same time.”

“I’m serious,” Kyungsoo insists, but he can’t help but smile a little from the fact that Baekhyun has paid him enough attention to notice that about him. “I think seeing you there made me want to be an actor.”

Baekhyun scoffs. “I was eight years old.”

“I wasn’t talking about your artistry or whatever. When I was eight, all I could think about was not going to school. I was jealous of the kids on TV.”

“Trust me, you’re lucky,” Baekhyun says as he shakes his head, the wistfulness in his eyes unmistakable. “I wish we never left San Francisco.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything to that, mostly because he doesn’t know _what_ to say. He’s sensing that there’s a lot to unpack here, but he isn’t quite sure if six months of being coworkers qualifies him to talk to Baekhyun about his childhood trauma.

In an attempt to lighten the mood, Kyungsoo jokes, “Hey, if it all becomes too much, you can always convert your pool deck into a viewing deck for the Hollywood Sign. Easy money, if you ask me.”

That at least returns the smile on Baekhyun’s lips. “I might put the Griffith Observatory out of business,” he plays along.

“I’m gonna tell you something really weird,” Kyungsoo announces all of a sudden. “Please don’t make fun of me.”

Baekhyun feigns shock, letting out a gasp and putting a hand over his chest for more dramatic effect. “I would never,” he says.

Kyungsoo smiles despite rolling his eyes. “I’ve never been to the Griffith Observatory.”

Baekhyun nearly chokes on his beer. This time, his shock is nothing short of genuine, but it’s more horror than surprise. He looks at Kyungsoo like he’s grown another head.

“All your life, you’ve lived in LA. And yet…”

“So what?” Kyungsoo challenges. “You’re gonna take away my Angeleno card?”

“If I could I would,” Baekhyun replies. He finishes the rest of his beer, setting the now-empty bottle down on the floor. “What self-respecting Angeleno has never gone to the Griffith Observatory? That’s like living in New York and not going to see the Empire State Building _at least_ once.”

Kyungsoo thinks the analogy is a bit over the top, but he doesn’t comment on it. “I’ve been to the park. Not just the observatory.”

“This won’t do,” Baekhyun mutters mostly to himself, but Kyungsoo can hear him anyway. “I’m taking you to the observatory first thing tomorrow.”

“You know, if you wanted to ask me out, you could’ve just said so,” Kyungsoo blurts out before he can stop himself. Perhaps it’s the six bottles of Heineken talking, but for some reason, he isn’t afraid to be this brave. “I think you’re just using Griffith as an excuse.”

“Maybe.” Baekhyun doesn’t even stutter. “Or maybe I’m a serial killer and I’m using a Griffith date to bait you. You _did_ say I seem like I know a good place to hide a body.”

Kyungsoo arches his brow at him. “A _date_?” he asks. He barely heard a word that came after that.

Baekhyun smiles, the kind that sends Kyungsoo’s heart racing no matter how much he wants it not to. “Yes, Doh Kyungsoo. I’d like to ask you out on a date.”

**_Present Day_ **

A funeral was last on his list of daydreams whenever Kyungsoo imagined his grand reunion with Los Angeles. He always thought it would be uneventful, a walk down memory lane that spurred nothing but nostalgic sentiments.

But the scene in front of him is anything but uneventful.

Baekhyun’s house has always been too big for him and for anyone that he brought home. The sleek grandiosity of it is superficial — like everything else in Los Angeles — and the people that know Baekhyun best understand that it stands there to compensate for everything. A dysfunctional family. An unhappy childhood. Crippling loneliness.

But now the hillside mansion is full of people; even though everyone’s dressed for mourning, the sheer number of souls present has uncannily breathed life into the house that has always been empty.

Kyungsoo leans against a corner with a styrofoam cup filled with coffee darker than his suit, willing himself to melt into the wallpaper so that no one notices him while he observes everybody else.

If he had no idea what happened, he would’ve thought he’s in an afterparty for the Golden Globes because of all the actors, writers, producers, and executives gathered at that moment to offer each other consolation about a person they barely knew outside of studios and Hollywood parties.

Kyungsoo recognizes a handful of Baekhyun’s ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, and ex-somethings. He wonders if they saw Baekhyun the way he did — if Baekhyun let them see what he’d shown Kyungsoo, at all — and if the relationship ended because of it. Kyungsoo’s certain of one thing: they wouldn’t have shown up to pay their respects today if they didn’t care for Baekhyun at some point in their lives.

After a couple more minutes of people watching, Kyungsoo finally realizes who isn’t there. He grabs Junmyeon by the arm as he passes by and asks, “The Byuns couldn’t make it?”

Junmyeon answers with a disappointed sigh. “I couldn’t get a hold of his parents, so, naturally, I called Baekbeom.”

“And?”

“Apparently he’s too busy for his brother’s memorial service.” Junmyeon doesn’t even try to hide the distaste in his voice. “He didn’t even forward me their parents’ contact details when I asked for it. Straight up ignored me after one text.”

“He couldn’t even spare a day? A flight from San Francisco doesn’t even take two hours.”

Junmyeon looks at him curiously, until he remembers that Kyungsoo hasn’t been around for the past five years. “He doesn’t live there anymore,” he explains. “His family moved back to Seoul.”

Kyungsoo falls silent after that. There are truly relationships beyond salvation, he realizes, even familial ones. He wants to get mad at Baekhyun’s family for not being there right until the end, but, then again, there must be reasons behind their absence. Kyungsoo had his reasons for leaving when Baekhyun probably needed him the most, too.

“Don’t worry too much about them. I think it’s better that they didn’t come here and pretend they had some sort of functioning relationship with Baekhyun when they didn’t,” Junmyeon reassures him, and then glances at his wristwatch. “Jongdae’s giving out his eulogy in a while.”

Kyungsoo simply nods as he stares at his coffee, which has now gone cold. With one last pat on Kyungsoo’s shoulder, Junmyeon disappears once again into the crowd to thank visitors for coming at such short notice. Even in his clients’ death, Junmyeon goes above and beyond as an agent — and as a friend.

Soon, everyone gathers in the living room. Jongdae stands in the center and begins by thanking people for coming even though the news broke only this morning. Jongdae’s eyes seem less bloodshot now, albeit their swollenness still hasn’t gone away. He looks tired, Kyungsoo thinks. Everybody in the room probably is.

Much of Jongdae’s eulogy is centered around the good years he and Baekhyun spent as children; both of them were thrust into the limelight too early for their liking, and in the loneliness that came with being introduced to the industry, they found each other. He says he and Baekhyun kept each other afloat, with Baekhyun doing more even if he’ll never realize it now. Jongdae’s sentences get sloppier and sloppier with each word as he tries not to break down into tears again. Eventually, he cracks, the waterworks beginning yet once more, and everyone follows suit as it’s difficult not to empathize with someone who’s eulogizing about a person they obviously loved without boundaries.

“Contrary to popular belief, Baekhyun wasn’t a happy person,” Jongdae says. “He made everyone happy. He made everyone laugh. But when it’s just the two of us, when the cameras are gone and lights are turned off, there was this deep hole of loneliness that just couldn’t be filled with whatever he tried to stuff in there.

“I tried to be there for him as much as I could. And I was the happiest when I saw him forget that loneliness even just for a fleeting moment. I was the happiest when he seemed happy. And Baekhyun was the happiest when he fell in love, when he realized that being lonely is not all there is to his life — that he’s allowed to be happy.

“I know it seemed like he was in love for most of his life.” Jongdae allows himself a small smile. “Baekhyun had a lot of secrets. His dating life was not one of those.” The crowd chuckles affectionately, knowing fully that Baekhyun had a new dating rumor about every quarter of the year.

Jongdae continues, “But I know him. I probably knew Baekhyun better than I knew myself. And I know, even if he never told me, that he’s only fallen in love once. I know that because he never tried to be better. He never wanted to change anything in his life that was forced onto him at such a young age. He simply went through the motions without really feeling anything deep down.

“But when he met this person… I don’t know. It’s like fireworks went off. He began trying to fix his shit, get his life together. I’ve never seen him try so hard to get this one thing in his life right among the million mistakes he’s made. He really wanted to see it through.”

Kyungsoo, who’s still at the corner of the room, begins to cry.

“Baekhyun has never asked for help from anybody. Not even from me. So I help him conspicuously, without him realizing it. But when he fell in love, he told me five words I never thought I’d hear from him. He said, ‘Dae, I need your help.’

“That’s the exact moment I knew that he’s in love, and that he really meant it, and that he’ll try to do anything to keep that one good thing in his life, perhaps even at the expense of the comfort he’s found in his destructive tendencies.

“But, like most things in life, it didn’t work out. You know how they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? I think Baekhyun was convinced that he couldn’t teach himself new things, the things he lacked for most of his life. Forgiveness. Acceptance. Love.”

Jongdae pauses for a moment. His eyes are now even more bloodshot than they were when Kyungsoo first saw him on the pool deck. He heaves in a few difficult breaths, and when he composes himself, he goes on.

“And it really hurt me that he couldn’t see that he was so loved… That we all loved him. That we all wanted to help him. That we were with him no matter how difficult it could get. But even though he couldn’t see that, I know that he has nothing but love in his heart. I know that he loved even the ones that hurt him, and he loved even more the ones he’d hurt in some way.

“That’s how I want all of us to remember Baekhyun — not as an actor, not as someone who had his dating life plastered on tabloids, and definitely not an addict because of how he died. When I saw him, I never saw any of those things. I only saw someone who desperately wanted to be loved but didn’t know how to love without hurting someone or himself in the process. And that’s how I’ll remember him from this day onward. I’ll remember him as love.”

**_November 2014_ **

Kyungsoo nearly drops the slice of pizza he’d just taken out of the microwave when a familiar, obnoxious sound of a car horn blasts away just outside his apartment building at quarter to eleven.

He runs outside wearing just his boxers and a shirt which he isn’t entirely sure whether it’s clean or not as he hastily picked it up from his couch. Sure enough, what greets him outside is the yellow convertible Benz he knows like the back of his hand, with its owner behind the wheel sporting a big stupid grin on his face.

“What on earth are you doing here, Baek?” Kyungsoo asks. He crosses his arms in front of him as a pathetic attempt to keep himself warm.

“I thought we had a date?”

Kyungsoo looks at him incredulously. “It’s _nearly_ an hour to midnight! What the hell are you talking about?”

“Change into warmer clothes,” Baekhyun instructs, completely ignoring what Kyungsoo had just said.

The mischievous glint in Baekhyun’s eyes already suggests that he’s up to no good and Kyungsoo has no energy left in him to argue, so he heads back to his apartment to change into jeans and a shirt that he’s certain is clean, grabbing a jacket on his way out. Kyungsoo hops inside Baekhyun’s car and they drive away into the night as the lonely slice of pizza he had just reheated begins to get cold again on top of his kitchen countertop.

* * *

Even though he’s never been to the observatory, Kyungsoo is well aware of the fact that it closes at ten o’clock on Sundays, so when Baekhyun turns left onto Vermont Avenue, Kyungsoo begins to think that perhaps Baekhyun wasn’t joking that time about being a serial killer.

Kyungsoo doesn’t scare easy. But driving through Griffith Park at 11 p.m. unsettles him because, well, it’s so… quiet. And in all his thirty-one years of living in Los Angeles, silence is a rarity.

Baekhyun hasn’t said a word since they left Kyungsoo’s apartment building. He’s been smiling for the entirety of the drive, and when they finally arrive at the observatory, his smile just grew wider.

“So this is where you hide bodies,” Kyungsoo says as he steps out of the car. He jams his hands into the pockets of his jacket when a particularly cold gust of wind blows right by.

Baekhyun laughs. “Nah, I dump them in the woods, let the coyotes do all the work.”

“See, I know that’s a joke, but the more I spend time with you tonight, the more I begin to doubt whether you’re really joking or not.”

Baekhyun rolls his eyes at him, but a smile remains on his lips. He extends his hand for Kyungsoo to take, and Kyungsoo does despite a few seconds of hesitation.

They go around the observatory until they find a door that clearly says off limits. The security guard stationed there simply nods at them as they enter, as if two people sneaking inside the Griffith Observatory is the most normal thing in the world.

When they’re finally inside, Kyungsoo asks, “How much did you pay them to do this?”

“I didn’t,” Baekhyun replies, the nonchalance in his voice bewildering his companion even more. “You’d be surprised at how little it takes for celebrities to get preferential treatment almost anywhere.”

“Abuse your fame. Noted,” Kyungsoo says sarcastically. “I’m still not used to being a screen actor, to be honest. I think I was more born for the stage.”

“The stage at the Bootleg Theater?”

“Yes. Exactly the stage at Bootleg.”

Baekhyun can’t help but laugh a little at how quickly Kyungsoo plays along with his teasing and outthinks him in the process.

They walk around the observatory with their hands linked and with smiles on their faces as they pass by the exhibits. Kyungsoo feels like it’s the ‘90s all over again; he feels like a child on a school trip, seeing many different things for the first time in his life. He never thought his first visit to one of Los Angeles’ most iconic buildings would be at thirty-one, but they always say it’s better late than never.

Baekhyun leads him in front of the Tesla coil. Kyungsoo looks at the display awkwardly, seeing nothing but an odd metal ball on a pedestal inside a cage.

“Is this supposed to be impressive? Because…”

Kyungsoo’s sentence is stopped short when Baekhyun presses a button on the wall and thin rods of electricity stems out of the metal ball and begins dancing around the cage. Baekhyun stares at Kyungsoo’s eyes as they light up while watching the coil. He doesn’t miss the way Kyungsoo’s lips are slowly curling upward, like he’s holding himself back from looking too fascinated.

Baekhyun takes his hand off the switch and silence fills the exhibit once again, the blue lights vanishing from inside the cage. Kyungsoo looks at him and asks, “What exactly is the coil for?”

“I don’t know,” Baekhyun answers truthfully, earning a soft chuckle from Kyungsoo. “I’m not a science guy so I’m not really sure. It’s really pretty, though.”

“It is,” Kyungsoo agrees.

Baekhyun slides his hand into Kyungsoo’s once more. He whispers, “But that isn’t the best part of the observatory. Come on.”

He pulls Kyungsoo into the planetarium. The moment they enter the dome-roofed room, the lights go out and the ceiling illuminates like the night sky, displaying hundreds and hundreds of stars that one couldn’t possibly see in the real Los Angeles sky.

A sound of a woman’s voice echoes through the room as she rhapsodizes about how humans have looked at the heavens to explain so many things in their lives like religion, myths, and time.

Kyungsoo can’t take his eyes off the ceiling. He’s never seen so many stars above him, even though the ones he’s looking at are merely projections, a vision of what the sky would look like if city lights hadn’t outshone it.

“What do you know about astrology?” Baekhyun asks softly.

“Not much,” Kyungsoo admits, his gaze still locked above him. “Zodiac signs, right?”

“Essentially, yes. They use the heavens to explain things that happen in our lives, like the lives we live are quite literally written in the stars.”

Kyungsoo doubts that, yet he believes it at the same time. The more he marvels at the celestial bodies above him, the more he becomes certain that there’s no way something immensely magical couldn’t have an effect on the people struck by its beauty. The stars feel larger than life because they are — they outnumber everyone on earth, and they occupy more space in the universe than anything else.

“Do you believe in that?” Kyungsoo asks. “Astrology, I mean.”

Baekhyun thinks about it for a moment. “I’d like to,” he finally says. “Astrology says that the probability of Capricorns and Tauruses being soulmates is quite high.”

“But I’m a Capricorn,” Kyungsoo says, utterly confused. “I don’t think I’ve met a Taurus.”

“You have,” Baekhyun assures him. Kyungsoo finally tears his eyes off the film and looks at Baekhyun. “You’re looking at him right now.”

Kyungsoo’s certain that his heart just exploded in his chest. He quickly averts his gaze yet again, hoping that Baekhyun doesn’t notice the heat rushing to color his face.

“I hope the stars aren’t wrong about you, Doh Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun whispers.

Kyungsoo isn’t sure whether Baekhyun intended him to hear that or not, but nevertheless, he can’t help but hope for the same thing Baekhyun is hoping for.

* * *

“Okay, my turn.”

“Already?” Kyungsoo protests.

Baekhyun throws a potato chip at him, laughing. “Yes, already. Hmmm. Ah! I’ve got one.”

“Fire away.”

“If you weren’t an actor, what would you have been?”

Kyungsoo smiles at how easy the question is. He looks at the twinkling lights of the city below them, and he’s reminded of the planetarium they’d just been to a few minutes ago. He wonders if his destiny is also written in the city lights of Los Angeles like how astrology claims that everything has been already written in the stars.

He thinks about whether he can still change the life Los Angeles has decided for him.

“I would’ve been an architect,” he answers. “I still want to be one. There’s this really nice arts school in Spain I want to study at.”

“Why Spain?”

“I’ve always wanted to go there. I figured if I went to college there, it’d be like hitting two birds with one stone,” Kyungsoo explains.

“You didn’t go to college?” Baekhyun asks. He takes a long sip of his fifth bottle of beer, and Kyungsoo wonders if he ever gets drunk.

Kyungsoo shakes his head. “I couldn’t afford it. I had to send money to my parents back in Seoul because they flew there to take care of my sick grandmother. I had to put them before myself.” When Baekhyun doesn’t say anything and Kyungsoo thinks he’d spoiled the mood, he jokes, “You know, that was three questions in a row. I’m starting to think you’re cheating.”

Baekhyun breaks into a smile and throws another potato chip at Kyungsoo. “Okay, fine. Your turn.”

“You never tell anyone about your family. Is there a reason why?”

“You didn’t even pause,” Baekhyun points out, squinting his eyes at Kyungsoo out of suspicion. “You had that one written long ago, didn’t you?”

Kyungsoo shrugs as he fills his mouth with potato chips. “You can say I’m just a naturally curious person. And I observe things really well, too.”

“The only reason I don’t talk about them is that I don’t like them. I cut them out of my life a long time ago.”

“You know that you’re supposed to elaborate, right? I thought we went through the rules already.”

“What do you want me to say?” Baekhyun asks. He downs the rest of his beer in one swig. He grabs another bottle from the ice chest and opens it using the edge of the terrace railing. “Do you want me to say that both my parents turned into alcoholics when I was born because they didn’t want me and that I grew up in a household that never said one good thing about me?”

“Only if it’s true.”

Baekhyun sighs. “It is,” he says, sipping at his beer yet again. “But they got better when I started bringing money into the family. You know, from all the acting I did as a child. They were still mean to me but at least they know that I quite literally am the reason why there’s food on the table, why the bills can be paid, why Baekbeom afforded to go to college. It just feels nice knowing that they owe me for everything good that ever happened in their lives, even if I never heard them say thank you.” Baekhyun wipes a tear from his cheek and laughs to cover it up. “Okay, it’s my turn. Enough of the sappy shit. Hmmm. Let’s see…”

“Sometime this week, Baek,” Kyungsoo jokes.

“Shut up. I’m thinking.” Baekhyun ponders for a few more seconds and then he exclaims, “What do you think about today?”

“I loved it,” Kyungsoo answers without missing a beat.

“Even though we’re only eating potato chips and drinking beer at the terrace of the Griffith Observatory?”

Kyungsoo can’t help but crack a smile. “Especially because of that.”

**_Present Day_ **

Kyungsoo always carries a pack of cigarettes with him. He hasn’t smoked one in almost six months — he’d promised Chanyeol that he’d quit for his own sake — and yet when he pulls a stick from the box and lights it up it doesn’t feel out of place, his mouth and lungs moving with muscle memory.

It was Baekhyun who introduced him to the vice. Baekhyun had introduced him to a lot of things. But it’s only the cigarettes that stuck with him even after leaving Los Angeles, perhaps because Baekhyun always tasted like them. And as he sits on the driveway inhaling and exhaling bitter smoke, he remembers all of the cigarettes he’d shared with the only man he ever loved when he lived in Los Angeles.

The memorial service is almost done. A lot of people have left shortly after Jongdae’s heart wrenching eulogy. But then another car pulls up the driveway.

Kyungsoo looks at it curiously as he smokes, a feeling in his gut telling him that he knows who’s behind the wheel. The door opens and the driver steps out, and the smoke swirling in Kyungsoo’s mouth have turned even more bitter on his tongue.

“Sehun,” Kyungsoo greets the newcomer as he walks toward him.

“Soo. It’s nice to see you.”

Kyungsoo wishes he could say the same, he truly does, given the occasion. But seeing Sehun reminds him of all the terrible things that have happened to him in this city in contrast to how Jongdae’s eulogy only made him remember the good parts.

 _Nice of you to show up_ , Kyungsoo wants to say badly. He bites his tongue out of respect, out of the fact that it’s been years since he’d seen Sehun. Kyungsoo has enough decency in his body to know when to snap and when to be appropriate.

“I’m really sorry for your loss,” Sehun says.

Kyungsoo’s not sure if it’s still his loss even though he willingly chose to let Baekhyun go, but he accepts Sehun’s condolences nonetheless. “You missed Jongdae’s eulogy.”

“I don’t think Jongdae would’ve wanted me to hear it.”

That, Kyungsoo doesn’t doubt. He looks at Sehun curiously, wondering if he’s still the same person after all these years. On the outside, he looks entirely different. The black hair that Kyungsoo last saw on him is now replaced with a rusty orange color. He’s tanner and leaner, and his features have matured a lot, too. Kyungsoo wonders if Sehun has changed beyond physically.

“You look good,” Kyungsoo tells him.

“I’d say the same but… You look tired.” Kyungsoo laughs at that, because he knows it’s true. “Last thing I’ve heard about you was that you moved to Spain for college.” Kyungsoo nods. “How’d that turn out?” Sehun takes a seat beside him and asks for a cigarette.

“It turned out pretty well.” Kyungsoo wishes the same for the people he left behind. After all these years, he still asks himself if it was selfish of him to leave and pursue his dreams at the expense of people that badly needed him. “How ‘bout you? I hope you turned out well, too.”

A faint smile appears on Sehun’s lips. “It did, actually. I just got out of rehab.”

“Oh,” is all Kyungsoo can say. “Wow. That’s—”

“I know. Baekhyun was the one who encouraged me to do it. He wouldn’t stop going on about it after he went. I really just went to stop him from bothering me, but now I’m glad I did. I’m thankful that I went more than anything in the world.”

“Baekhyun… H-he went? I didn’t know that. I thought he just stopped.”

Sehun nods. Kyungsoo can see tears starting to pool in his eyes, but Sehun does an excellent job of keeping them at bay. “He did. That’s why when I received Junmyeon’s text this morning, I… I was confused. And hurt. I was so hurt I almost didn’t come here.” Sehun stands up. He takes one last drag of his cigarette before throwing it onto the gravel and stepping on it. “I should head inside. It’s really nice to see you again.”

“You too,” Kyungsoo replies, and this time, he means it.

**_March 2015_ **

“Why are you dragging me along to this?” Kyungsoo asks.

“Because,” Baekhyun whines, “We don’t start taping for season two until next week and I want to have fun with you. Plus, I want you to meet a friend. He just got back from New York. This is his homecoming party.”

But Kyungsoo doesn’t want to meet Oh Sehun, even if Baekhyun hasn’t told him yet that he’s the owner of the house they’re standing outside of; he overheard Junmyeon and Baekhyun talking about it yesterday over breakfast.

Kyungsoo has never met Oh Sehun, but he knows that he’s one of Baekhyun’s ex-somethings. It was never confirmed, naturally — all of Baekhyun’s same-sex flings never grew out of being rumors — but rumors don’t start from nowhere. That’s enough reason not like Oh Sehun, at least the way Kyungsoo sees it.

Kyungsoo knows he’s being irrational and he hates it. But he just can’t help himself when Baekhyun’s _this_ excited to see a past fling, as if he wasn’t blabbing about soulmates to Kyungsoo three months ago at the observatory.

“What’s wrong with your face?” Baekhyun asks.

“Nothing.”

“You look irritated.”

“I’m not.”

Baekhyun bursts into maniacal laughter, tears pooling at the sides of his eyes as he guffaws. He hunches over and steadies himself with his hands on his knees to keep himself from toppling over. “Doh Kyungsoo,” he says when he calms himself down.

“What?”

“You’re jealous, aren’t you?” Baekhyun asks even if he didn’t need to. The answer is clear as day on Kyungsoo’s face, and the way Kyungsoo’s scowl deepens just proves Baekhyun’s accusation even more.

“Fuck off, Baek,” Kyungsoo says with one last glare, and then he storms inside Oh Sehun’s house with Baekhyun following behind.

Kyungsoo is no stranger to Hollywood parties. He has tagged along enough to know how lawless they can be, but the current state of Oh Sehun’s living room puts every other celebrity party he’s been to shame. Every person is _at least_ holding some kind of drug: alcohol, weed — Kyungsoo even witnesses a man snorting a line with a rolled up Benjamin like it’s nothing.

“Discreet,” Kyungsoo sarcastically remarks over the thumping bass echoing throughout the house.

“It’s LA,” Baekhyun shrugs, already holding two shots of vodka. He hands Kyungsoo the other glass and they both down it a clean swig.

The liquor burns Kyungsoo’s throat as it slides down into his stomach. Kyungsoo still hasn’t gotten used to vodka. Unfortunately for him, it’s Baekhyun’s favorite and he always finds it hard to turn Baekhyun down whenever he offers a shot.

Someone shouts Baekhyun’s name from behind them, the voice overpowering the thunderous music in the room. They turn around, and Kyungsoo sees Oh Sehun in the flesh for the first time.

“I’m so glad you made it,” Sehun says to Baekhyun as he wraps his arms around him, much to Kyungsoo’s distaste.

Kyungsoo uses all of his willpower not to roll his eyes at the sight.

“It’s nothing,” Baekhyun waves him off. “It was a short drive, anyway. This is Kyungsoo, by the way. We have the same agent.”

A spark of recognition flashes in Sehun’s eyes. “Yeah… You’re also on Hash Time, right?” he asks, extending his hand out for Kyungsoo to shake.

“That’s me,” Kyungsoo smiles, albeit against his will. He shakes Sehun’s hand just for the sake of it. “Welcome back to LA, Sehun. Great party, by the way.”

“Oh, this is nothing,” Sehun waves him off. “Just a small homecoming. But thanks.”

 _Homecoming of crackheads, maybe_ , Kyungsoo tells himself. He can’t quite put his finger on it, but even after just one conversation with Sehun, he can already tell that he’s bad news. Kyungsoo has considered the fact that he’s being biased because of the fact that the six-foot man in front of him had been with Baekhyun, but his stomach is still roiling with premonition.

“If you guys want a fix, just tell me. Jaebeom’s here,” Sehun says.

Kyungsoo doesn’t have the faintest idea of who the hell Jaebeom is, but the mention of the dude’s name causes Baekhyun’s eyes to light up. “He still sells Molly?”

“The best and you know it,” Sehun winks. Kyungsoo almost throws up.

Baekhyun’s grin grows wider and wider until it reaches his ears. “I’m down.” He then turns to Kyungsoo to see if he has the same answer, the look of expectation evident in his eyes.

“Oh, drugs. That’s cool, but—” Kyungsoo begins to say.

“Alright!” Sehun exclaims, cutting Kyungsoo off. He drapes his arms over Baekhyun and Kyungsoo’s shoulders like they’ve known each other since childhood. “Let’s get us the best Molly in LA.”

* * *

Kyungsoo has never taken drugs before, so he doesn’t know what to expect. From what he’s seen on TV and in movies, the trips are supposedly so otherworldly that one high makes you crave a hundred more, but it’s been nearly thirty minutes since they took the shit that Jaebeom gave them and he still feels… Well, he still feels like Kyungsoo.

“It doesn’t hit right away, does it?”

Jaebeom laughs, but it’s more out of genuine amusement at Kyungsoo’s cluelessness rather than mockery. “Nah, dude. Give it time.”

“First time?” Sehun asks Kyungsoo, a small smile dancing on his lips.

“Is that a bad thing?”

Sehun fervently shakes his head. He hands Kyungsoo another shot of vodka, touches his glass to Kyungsoo’s, and then they drink. “Of course not. Man, if I could turn back time, I’d go back to my first Molly trip over any other day.”

“Why?” Kyungsoo raises an eyebrow. He notices that the vodka no longer scorches his throat when he swallows. He wonders if it was a side effect of the drug.

“I can’t describe it,” Sehun says. “You’ll have to see for yourself. My advice? Maybe stay away from women when it finally hits. Or men. Whichever team you bat for.”

“Why?” Kyungsoo repeats.

“Don’t worry about it,” Baekhyun assures him.

Frustrated at how nobody seems to give him straight answers, Kyungsoo snatches the vodka bottle from Jaebeom and pours himself shot after shot after shot. When the three consecutive swigs vodka doesn’t make his throat feel anything, Kyungsoo begins to feel that something’s wrong.

“Whatever. I’m going to the restroom.” And then Kyungsoo’s gone, leaving the three other men at the kitchen island.

The trip finally comes crashing down on Kyungsoo the moment he zips up his pants. It hit him like a truck going at a hundred miles per hour, heavy and out of nowhere. It’s as if Kyungsoo’s entire world was engulfed in darkness and someone had turned on the light just now. Everything feels brighter and clearer.

Kyungsoo stumbles out of the bathroom after splashing some water on his face. He feels like he’s floating, but it’s not the kind of weightlessness he feels when he’s drunk. This one feels infinitely more potent than that, and the closest thing Kyungsoo could compare it to was the way he felt that night at the observatory when Baekhyun looked at him like he was one of the stars in the night sky.

When Kyungsoo heads back to the kitchen island where he left the others, he finds it empty. Confused, he goes to look for them all over the mansion, and in the process, he gets handed a drink after another.

He eventually finds himself on the second floor, though he doesn’t remember lugging his feet to climb the stairs — he remembers the feeling of flying upward, like he grew wings out of the blue and they carried him upstairs. Kyungsoo knows that’s impossible, but he’s feeling every possible emotion in the world right now so he has no clear direction as to what can be possible or not.

Kyungsoo hastily crams himself into an empty bedroom when the music becomes too loud for him. With the sudden silence he can finally hear his heartbeat drumming funnily in his eardrums, sounding like a dragon boat drum going faster and faster and faster until it’s all he could hear.

The beating stops when the bedroom door opens.

“What are you doing in Sehun’s room?” a familiar voice asks. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

Kyungsoo licks his lips and smacks them together. He doesn’t remember eating sugar, and yet the roof of his mouth tastes incredibly sweet.

“Baek.”

“Hmm?”

“I think the Molly’s hitting now.”

Baekhyun rushes to his side and makes him sit down on the bed. He takes Baekhyun’s hands and squeezes them. “Your hands are so cold.”

“They’re not…” Kyungsoo slurs. “You’re just warm.”

“It’s definitely hitting,” Baekhyun says.

Kyungsoo plops down on the mattress and waves his arms up and down the sheets as if he’s making a nonexistent snow angel. Sehun was right that the trip was hard to describe, Kyungsoo realizes.

“How do you feel?”

Kyungsoo doesn’t even need to think about it. “Happy. I just feel happy. Joyful. Ecstatic. Merry. Every synonym of happy. That’s how I feel.” He flaps his arms on the bed even faster, inducing a small headache from Baekhyun.

“Stop moving. It’s irritating.” Baekhyun’s words fall on deaf ears as Kyungsoo moves his arms even more. “Soo. Stop it.” Kyungsoo still doesn’t listen. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Baekhyun snaps as he climbs on top of Kyungsoo and holds his arms in place.

The beating in Kyungsoo’s ears start again.

_Dum. Dum. Dum. Dum. Dum._

“Baek?”

“What?”

“I think I know now why Sehun told me to stay away from women, men, or whichever team I bat for during the trip.”

Baekhyun’s face flushes red when he realizes that Kyungsoo’s figured it out. As he’s looking at Kyungsoo’s eyes, it’s obvious they’re jaded. And yet Baekhyun’s gut tells him that Kyungsoo’s eyes aren’t sparkling for no reason, that he’s asking him for something.

Baekhyun shakes his head and climbs off Kyungsoo. “How ‘bout we do _that_ when both of us are sober?”

Kyungsoo sits right up. “Why? Would you rather do it with Sehun instead?” he huffs.

“What?” Baekhyun snorts. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Kyungsoo heaves what could possibly be the deepest sigh he’s ever done in his life, frustrated that he’s only ever this brave when he’s taken something to loosen him up. “Sehun. You know. The cute, tall guy from before. He’s your… Ex-something.”

“Ex-something?”

“Goddammit, Byun Baekhyun, just kiss me already!”

Baekhyun freezes at Kyungsoo’s outburst. “Listen,” he begins, “you have no idea how much I wanted to kiss you from the moment we’ve met. But we’re both out of it and I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret.”

“You’re not even tripping yet,” Kyungsoo protests.

“I am. I’m just better at controlling it. I’ve taken more shit from Jaebeom than you could count.”

“No, you listen to me,” Kyungsoo puts his foot down, but to Baekhyun, he sounds like a whining kid. “I’m not sober.”

“I know.”

“But I’m not out of it. If anything, I’m _in_ of it. That doesn’t make sense, but it does to me. This shit you guys gave me is, is… Fuck. I don’t know. It’s Red Bull on steroids. My heart’s racing, I can’t stop moving, I can feel everything. And I’ve never felt so brave in my life, so can you please just kiss me before I come down from my high and never get the courage to ask you to kiss me ever again.”

Baekhyun looks at him for a few moments. “Are you sure?” he asks so softly that his voice is a decibel away from being a whisper.

“Yes.”

“Are you _really_ sure?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

“Last chance to back out.”

“Fuck it, Baek! Just—”

Baekhyun swoops down and crashes his lips onto Kyungsoo’s.

The drumming returns in Kyungsoo’s ears with a chaotic _dumdumdumdumdumdumdumdumdumdum_ and only stops when Baekhyun cups his cheeks with his hands, the warmth from Baekhyun’s palms seeping into his skin like butter melting on toast.

This isn’t Kyungsoo’s first kiss, but it sure feels like it. Baekhyun’s lips are warm and soft as they kiss him with such gentleness Kyungsoo’s never felt before. Baekhyun tastes like cigarettes and vodka and yet Kyungsoo just can’t get enough of him; he places his arms around Baekhyun’s neck and pulls him down to the bed with him. Neither of them break the kiss.

Kyungsoo swipes his tongue on Baekhyun’s lower lip making the latter moans, and dear god, Kyungsoo has never heard anything sweeter in his life.

Baekhyun’s lips travel down to Kyungsoo’s neck, leaving marks where he shouldn’t, and move lower and lower until they reach the growing tent in Kyungsoo’s pants. Baekhyun hurriedly unbuckles his belt and peels off his bottoms in one swift motion.

Kyungsoo’s cock springs free — red and hot and needy — and Baekhyun takes it into his mouth.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Kyungsoo exhales as his head rolls backwards, his hands scrunching a fistful of Baekhyun’s hair. Baekhyun licks and sucks until Kyungsoo screams out another string of profanities. “Baek… B-Baek, stop. I’m close and I don’t want to cum yet.”

“Why not?”

“Why do you think?” Kyungsoo fires back. “Come here,” he instructs. “Let’s hope your little ex-something has lube here.”

Baekhyun climbs up and peels off his clothes too while Kyungsoo ransacks Sehun’s bedside table, straddling him when he’s done. When Kyungsoo finally finds some, he squeezes a generous amount of it onto his palm, spreading the liquid in between his fingers.

“Ready?” he asks Baekhyun as he lines up the first finger at his entrance.

Baekhyun nods, his eyes shutting tight as Kyungsoo works him open with one digit, entering slowly until it’s about knuckle-deep in Baekhyun. Baekhyun begins to moan when Kyungsoo starts to pull it inside and out, the friction enhanced a million times by the pill they’d taken almost an hour ago.

“God, you sound so good,” Kyungsoo says, and Baekhyun responds with an even louder cry. “I wonder if you’re this loud when you’re fucking your self with your pretty fingers.”

“Ah… _A-ah…_ More, please…”

Kyungsoo complies, sliding in another finger, and Baekhyun nearly crumbles at the sensation of Kyungsoo’s fingers fucking him open. Baekhyun’s cock twitches every time Kyungsoo’s fingers push inside, precum beginning to pool at the tip.

“Baek.”

“Mmm.”

“I didn’t find any condoms,” Kyungsoo says, but he doesn’t stop thrusting his fingers into Baekhyun.

Baekhyun doesn’t stop whimpering either. “I don’t care. More. _Please_.” He grabs Kyungsoo’s cock and begins pumping it.

“Okay, okay,” Kyungsoo concedes. He pulls out his fingers and flips Baekhyun over so that now he’s hovering over him. He grabs the lube once again and drizzles some on himself, stroking his cock to coat it all the way. “I’m going in, okay?”

Baekhyun nods and takes a sharp breath, letting out the loudest moan he’s let out all night when Kyungsoo thrusts in.

“Soo,” Baekhyun breathes out.

“Yeah?”

“You feel so fucking good inside me.”

And from that point, the Molly takes over Kyungsoo’s body. He begins to move his hips until he finds the stroke that makes Baekhyun rake his nails on his back. Moans drip from Baekhyun’s lips like honey, and the only time the room ever gets quiet is when Kyungsoo shuts him up with his lips. But even then, the sound of skin slapping against skin replaces the groans, and it’s the lewdest sound Kyungsoo has ever heard and it only makes him want to fuck Baekhyun harder.

Baekhyun cums first, squirting his load onto his own stomach with no help at all. His walls clench around Kyungsoo’s cock as he releases, and by then, Kyungsoo’s run out of curse words. Kyungsoo releases before he could pull out and he strokes himself until he finally taps out. He crashes beside Baekhyun, both of them struggling to catch their breath.

“Sehun’s gonna be so mad when he learns we fucked on his bed and used his lube,” Baekhyun says.

“It’s the least he could do for us.”

Baekhyun lets out a breathless sigh as he rolls to Kyungsoo’s side and kisses him on the cheek. “Soo?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m topping next time, okay?”

Kyungsoo’s too out of breath to answer, _I wouldn’t mind being wrecked by you_.

**_Present Day_ **

Baekhyun’s room hasn’t changed at all since Kyungsoo last saw it.

The bed’s still unmade. A pile of dirty clothes still sits in the corner of the room. The ashtray on his bedside table still has a mountain of cigarettes and cinders on it. Vodka bottles still litter the floor.

Kyungsoo looks around the room where he once slept and if he listens closely enough, he can still hear the promises he and Baekhyun have exchanged while in bed. He can still hear the hurtful words they’ve thrown at each other when something went wrong. He can still hear the deafening sound of glass shattering the last night he was here — the night he decided to leave.

He breaks down into tears and crumbles to the floor.

The second he got on that plane to Málaga, he knew exactly what he was signing up for. Getting on that plane meant that he’ll never see Baekhyun again, that he’ll never get to feel the way his fingers slide across his skin, that he’ll never get to banter with Baekhyun again. But now that it’s final, now that Baekhyun’s _truly_ gone, it hurts even more. Kyungsoo doesn’t quite understand it. Perhaps it’s because death is more permanent than any act of leaving — it can’t be taken back, it can’t be reversed by simply hopping on another plane and returning to Los Angeles.

Death took something other than Baekhyun; it also took the hope that Kyungsoo would meet him by chance somewhere, in a time when they’re both better people than they were when they met each other. It’s that hope that drives Kyungsoo to go on each day. It’s the only thing he was still clinging onto about Los Angeles, and now that it’s gone, he doesn’t know what to do.

But the what ifs are more painful than Baekhyun’s death. The could’ve beens: what could've happened is he just stayed, what could’ve been fixed if he only had the courage, what could’ve kept Baekhyun alive.

He finds it unfair, how guilt still hasn’t left him alone after all these years, after flying six thousand miles away from Los Angeles. It’s as if it’s managed to attach itself to his person, like a parasite sucking the life out of its host.

A soft knock resonates from the door, and when it opens, Junmyeon’s the one behind it.

“Soo.”

“It’s so fucking unfair,” Kyungsoo laments. He furiously wipes his tears away with the back of his hands, but more tears replace them. “This is so fucking unfair.”

Junmyeon rushes beside him, kneeling down on the carpeted floor to comfort him. “I know.”

“He, he was t-trying to get better. He told me that. He went to rehab. Why did this still fucking happen to him? It’s not fair.” Junmyeon doesn’t say anything. “And the people that came. I saw them. They were looking around like they knew this was bound to happen, that Baekhyun was always just one shot, one bender, one pill away from dying. What a bunch of fucking hypocrites. They don’t know anything. He was trying to be better!”

Junmyeon pulls him into his chest, and Kyungsoo sobs there, staining Junmyeon’s immaculate suit with snot and tears. Junmyeon hushes him like a parent would, soothing his back to calm him down.

“Kyungsoo,” Junmyeon says, his voice beginning to crack, “If you’re acting this way because for some reason you think you have a fault in this, please stop.”

“But I left him. I left him even though he needed me. Remember when he called the last night I was—”

“I know, I know. I remember,” Junmyeon interrupts him. “But it’s still not your fault. You don’t know if things would’ve turned out better if you stayed the same way you never would’ve guessed this was coming. I know that he was trying his best to clean up, but you can’t punish yourself for the mistakes Baekhyun made.”

“I loved him. So much,” Kyungsoo says, struggling to get the words out because of the tears choking him. “I wish I could tell him that.”

“I’m sure he knows,” Junmyeon promises.

“I wish I could’ve saved him.”

Junmyeon plants a kiss on top of Kyungsoo’s head. “We all do. But sometimes love isn’t enough to save people that don’t want to be saved.”

**_January 2016_ **

“Where have you been?” Kyungsoo asks Baekhyun the minute he comes home. He reeks of alcohol and cigarettes, and the jaded look in his eyes suggests that he’s taken something, too. Perhaps another fix from Jaebeom. “Another bender with Sehun and Jaebeom?”

Baekhyun sighs. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know, the truth?”

Baekhyun shakes his head, walking right past Kyungsoo toward the fridge. He pulls out a nearly-empty bottle of vodka and downs it straight from the bottle until it’s completely depleted. He gets a fresh bottle immediately.

“You _just_ went drinking and vodka is the first thing you grab as soon as you come home.”

Baekhyun slams the bottle on the floor with such force that its pieces fly off halfway across the room. He walks toward Kyungsoo, the shattered glass crunching under his shoes with every step. “If I knew you were just going to judge me for my coping mechanisms, I never would have asked you to move in.”

_He doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t mean it._

Kyungsoo repeats that over and over in his mind even though he feels like it’s his heart that Baekhyun just stepped on.

“I have never judged you for anything,” Kyungsoo says. He balls his hands into fists to hide their trembling as the sound of glass breaking still echoes in his ears. He’s never had reason to be afraid of Baekhyun. Perhaps tonight will be the first. “I just want you to stop ruining yourself over some stupid TV show being cancelled.”

Junmyeon was the first to hear about it. He was pulled aside by one of the network executives one day during taping, and when he came back, he couldn’t even get the words out.

 _“They’ve pulled the plug,”_ Kyungsoo remembers him saying. He remembers the look of utter shock and disbelief on the faces of everyone in the studio. Baekhyun, most of all.

 _“Is it because of me?”_ Baekhyun asked. Of course it was about him. Everyone in that room that the show is being killed by the network because of him.

He was arrested about a week before the network executive paid a visit to the studio and dropped the news. He was caught buying morphine under the Sixth Street Bridge with Sehun. Being the multimillionaires and men that they are, they got away with just a slap on the wrist in exchange for a hefty price. But the damage was already done. The news had already gone out. And news that had already spread was deadlier and harder to contain than any kind of California wildfire.

Baekhyun lunges at Kyungsoo and grabs him by the collar. Baekhyun’s pupils are shaking, but Kyungsoo isn’t sure if it’s out of anger or just sadness. “It’s easy for you to call it some stupid TV show because you have no idea how much I wanted to land that one. You have no fucking idea how shitty it feels to know that you may not land a job on the only thing you’re good at because of one dumb slip up.”

“Please let me go,” Kyungsoo whispers, tears beginning to drop down his cheeks. His entire body is now violently shaking. A line has been crossed.

Baekhyun’s eyes soften when he sees Kyungsoo crying. He loosens his grip on Kyungsoo’s shirt and lets his hands fall to his side. He turns around and walks back toward the fridge, pulling yet again another bottle of vodka out of it. He slumps on the dining table and begins chugging from the bottle as if it’s water while Kyungsoo struggles to stop himself from quivering.

“I’m sorry,” Baekhyun finally says after a couple of minutes of silence.

“B-Baek,” Kyungsoo begins, “I don’t know why you think I’m not on your side. I’m not your enemy. I want to help you.” The tears just keep on falling and falling. Kyungsoo doesn’t bother to wipe them off. “It hurts me seeing you like this, and I’m trying to help you to stop destroying yourself so that I could also spare myself the hurt, but… I’m exhausted. It’s like you’re pulling me under the current with you when I’m trying to save you from drowning. I don’t think I can do it anymore. I don’t think I can be with someone who’s too consumed with hate and negativity that he can’t see that people love him, that people want to help him.”

Baekhyun doesn’t say anything for a while. He takes another swig of his vodka. And another. And then another. And then he finally says, “If you don’t think you can put up with me anymore, then what are you still doing here?”

Kyungsoo doesn’t need to be told twice.

He nods once and then heads straight for the door.

* * *

“Thanks for letting me stay,” Kyungsoo says. “My lease ended a few weeks ago and all my stuff are already at Baekhyun’s so I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Don’t mention it.” Junmyeon sets a cup of hot chocolate in front of Kyungsoo, the steam fogging up Kyungsoo’s glasses a little. “What happened? Did he hurt you?” Junmyeon asks, pointing to a small cut on Kyungsoo’s forearm.

Kyungsoo only notices the cut now that Junmyeon has pointed it out. The sound of the vodka bottle breaking replays once more in his mind, and he tries his best to suppress the memory.

“He just threw a bottle on the floor. I’m fine.”

Junmyeon purses his lips as he looks at Kyungsoo, not convinced with his lie. He pushes the hot chocolate in front of Kyungsoo, urging him to drink. Kyungsoo finally takes the warm drink and sips from it.

“I don’t think you should go back there.”

Kyungsoo shakes his head. “W-We were both just mad. We didn’t mean anything that we said. I’m sure Baek will cool down in the morning.”

“No, Kyungsoo. I mean it. You can’t go back there. Not now. Not ever,” Junmyeon firmly says. “This _will_ happen again. And the next time, you might get more than just a small cut, and Baekhyun might throw something bigger than a bottle.”

Kyungsoo stays silent. He takes a newfound interest in the cup of hot chocolate nestled between his palms, his reflection staring back at him through the brown liquid. He doesn’t even recognize himself — he looks utterly horrified, his eyes shaking with fear.

He jumps in his seat when Junmyeon’s phone rings. The caller ID says it’s Baekhyun.

Junmyeon answers the call and puts it on speaker.

“What do you want?”

“Is he with you?” Baekhyun asks through the line, sniffling.

“Who?”

“Soo. I need to t-talk with him.”

“He’s not here.”

More sniffling echoes from the other end of the call. “Okay. If you see him, please tell him that I left a bunch of voicemails for him. And I’m sorry. And I need him to come home.”

“Baek, I think he’ll come home when he wants to.”

“No no no no no,” Baekhyun says. The tone of his voice suggests that he’s out of it, that he’s not sober. But then again, Baekhyun‘s rarely sober. “Please tell him to come home. But if he doesn’t want to yet, just please tell him to answer his phone. Because, b-because… If he doesn’t answer, I think something bad’s going to happen.”

“What do you mean, Baek?”

Silence.

“Baekhyun.”

A loud splash resonates from Baekhyun’s end.

The line clicks.

Junmyeon calls 911.

**_Present Day_ **

When Kyungsoo arrives at his boarding gate at Terminal 2 of LAX, he can count with his fingers how many seats are occupied. He always arrives three to four hours early whenever he takes international flights — a trick he’d learned from Chanyeol. He used to hate it, thinking it was an enormous waste of time to arrive over-early when the baggage check-in counters haven’t even opened yet.

 _“Lose an hour in the morning and you’ll be hunting for it all day,”_ Chanyeol used to say like some seventy-eight-year-old.

Kyungsoo never did understand what that meant, but he did notice that he always felt at ease when he was early for his flights. Eventually, he made it a habit to be early in almost everything else, too, and still, that tranquility followed.

And now as he sits there and waits for another plane to take him out of Los Angeles, Kyungsoo feels the most peaceful he’s been after all that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.

It’s not because he’s simply early for his flight. It’s because he’s finally leaving again, he’s finally going back to a place where he can forget Los Angeles for another few years. Málaga, apart from being the place where Kyungsoo has finally achieved something he actually wanted for himself, is mostly a distraction. It’s a distraction from Los Angeles, a distraction from all the pain this place has caused, a distraction from Baekhyun. Kyungsoo had fallen in love with his distractions, but they’re distractions nonetheless.

It’s not fair — for Málaga, for Chanyeol — and Kyungsoo acknowledges that. But life isn’t, too. And the only real way to forget about something is to keep yourself busy with whatever you can get your hands on, and eventually, you’ll forget that you’re trying to forget something.

But Kyungsoo wants to remember. For the last time.

He brings out his wallet and pulls out a folded piece of paper wedged behind so many old receipts that he always forgets to throw away. He gingerly unfolds it as if it’ll crumble under his touch, the familiar ugly handwriting greeting him when all the creases have been straightened.

Kyungsoo received the letter about four years ago, roughly a year after he left Los Angeles. He remembers his heart dropping to his feet when he found it among the bills in his pigeonhole, the handwriting immediately giving away who’s it from.

Kyungsoo looks outside and stares at the sky for a while, and thinks that no other sunset can really top an Angeleno one. Purple, orange, and pink hues are fighting for space in the clouds as the sun sets behind them, painting the sky a brilliant color in the process.

Kyungsoo allows himself a smile. He looks down at the letter he’s read a million times and reads it again. This time, for the last.

> _24 October 2017_
> 
> _Soo._
> 
> _I don’t know if this letter will ever cross the Atlantic. I don’t know if this will ever find you. But in the unlikely event that it does, please read it till the last punctuation. I know I’m in no position to ask you for something, but still. Please. There’s so much I want to tell you. And I can’t do that anymore through anything else except this letter._
> 
> _For the past year, all that I’ve dreamt about since you were gone was our first date at the Griffith Observatory. I’m not good with remembering things, but I’m a hundred percent sure that night was the best of my life. I remember us laughing and asking each other questions while we ate cheap potato chips and drank beer. I remember that night so vividly to the point that I begin to question whether it really happened or not, because I usually don’t remember things so clearly. But I remember that. And you looked so beautiful as you looked at the city from where we were standing and your eyes were doing this thing that I loved so much… and I don’t know how to describe it, but it reminds me of the shows at the planetarium. It reminds me of the stars._
> 
> _But then I woke up one morning crying after I dreamt that. I started to list down in my mind all the good memories I’ve given you when you were still here, and I could only list down a few other things along with our date at the observatory._
> 
> _And then I started crying._
> 
> _Of course, I was crying because you were gone. Because I hurt you. Because I said things that I shouldn’t have said, done things I shouldn’t have done. But I was also crying because I realized that we didn’t make enough good memories together… And I don’t want you to look back and remember LA as something bad and painful and ugly just because of me. You’ve lived in LA all your life and all it took was just one stupid guy to ruin it for you. And I’m sorry._
> 
> _I’m sorry. I don’t even know if I could ever apologize enough for everything. I’m pretty sure there are some things I can’t remember that I should be apologizing for. But I don’t know what else to say except I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not listening to you. I’m sorry for jumping into the pool. I’m sorry for making you worry. I’m sorry for pushing you away when all you wanted to do was help._
> 
> _I’m not going to ask you to come back. I don’t want to hurt you again. I think I’ve done enough of that when you were here. Instead, I’m going to ask you to be happy wherever you find yourself ending up. I hope you end up in Spain. I hope you get to be an architect, just like how you’ve always wanted. I hope you find someone who knows how to love you the way that you deserve to be loved, someone who deserves you. And most of all, I hope you live a long and happy life._
> 
> _When you think of LA, I hope you remember only the good things. The palm trees. The colors that come to life on Sunset Strip when it gets dark. The hotdogs at Pink’s. The beach. The Hollywood Sign. The view of the Hollywood Sign from the top of the Home Depot parking garage. The Griffith Observatory. The planetarium. The stars. The city lights._
> 
> _I’ll think about you, too, and remember only the good things._
> 
> _But please don’t think about me._
> 
> _Don’t worry, I’m trying my best to stay clean. I have been, for a few months now. I’ll be better. Soon. So please don’t think about me anymore._
> 
> _Think about yourself. Be happy._
> 
> _I love you so much._
> 
> _— B._

Kyungsoo folds the letter back to how it was, but he doesn’t return it to his wallet. Instead, he stands up and throws it away into the nearest bin. He goes back to his seat and gazes at the Los Angeles sunset once more, knowing that he won’t be able to see it again.

 _Happy New Year, Baekhyun_ , he silently says to the sky as he waits to leave again.

**Author's Note:**

> Playlist (listen to it [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/709ICKCdajSmSbDCVuwEPj?si=ZnJ41vZKTTe_xQP9L-KkQg)):  
> 1\. The Black Skirts - Hollywood  
> 2\. LANY - Made In Hollywood  
> 3\. Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling - City Of Stars - From "La La Land" Soundtrack  
> 4\. Motopony - Wait for Me  
> 5\. LANY - Malibu Nights  
> 6\. 88rising, NIKI - La La Lost You - Acoustic Version  
> 7\. BEKA, HONNE - Location Unknown - Brooklyn Session  
> 8\. Harry Styles - Falling  
> 9\. Daniel Caesar - Death & Taxes  
> 10\. 92914 - Okinawa  
>   
> Thank you for reading until the end! Say hello: [Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/nineteenninetytwo) / [Tumblr](http://pcychedelic.tumblr.com/) / [Twitter](http://twitter.com/pcychedeiic/)


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